Revenge of the tea party fizzles in legislative races

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It was to be revenge week, that long-awaited, highly anticipated time of tea party payback, when blacklisted "legis-traitors" would pay with their political lives.

Who can forget Maricopa County Republican Party Chairman A.J. LaFaro, fuming about their vote last year to expand Medicaid and likening it to the outrage and the heartbreak of Pearl Harbor?

"Their egregious actions will have serious consequences," LaFaro warned at the time. "Their political careers are all but over, and their days are numbered."

Or, as it turns out, not.

Three of the 11 moderates seeking another two years in the Legislature didn't even draw primary opposition. The other eight won handily on Tuesday, with a little help from Gov. Jan Brewer and the business/ hospital community and despite desperate last-minute robocalls from the Alliance for Principled Conservatives calling some of them "criminals".

OK, so the principles of the Alliance for Principled Conservatives aren't quite the principles the rest of us live by. Fortunately, the group's lies didn't matter – for the Medicaid legislators, at least.

The group's promise of a day of reckoning for moderate Republican incumbents never came. But neither did a new day in Arizona politics, the one in which the pragmatic wing of the GOP would take out some of the hard-liners who seem more interested in waging ideological warfare than in solving the serious issues facing the state.

Moderate challengers were unable to pick off even a single hard-right incumbent, despite sizable amounts of cash from outside groups hoping to catapult some of them into office.

In fact, the only incumbent who lost – Rep. Carl Seel -- was defeated by a tea party challenger. It seems Seel will just have to continue his quest for proof that Hezbollah is defrauding AHCCCS to fund its terrorist activities from outside the state Capitol.

Pity, that.

While this year's civil war within the GOP was a draw, a draw is actually a win for moderates when it comes to the Republican primary.

I was around in 1988, when Senate president Carl Kunasek, House Speaker Joe Lane and a host of Republican incumbents were taken out -- payback for their votes to impeach and convict then-Gov. Evan Mecham.

And then again in 2004, when five moderates were massacred after joining with Democrats to approve a budget that funded several of then-Gov. Janet Napolitano's initiatives, including all-day kindergarten in Arizona's poorest schools. A guy named John Huppenthal led the seismic sweep that year, upsetting then-Sen. Slade Mead. When it was done, then-Sen. Carolyn Allen was one of the few moderates left standing.

Now, 10 years later, plans for an all-out massacre of moderates have fizzled. The pity of it is that the moderates couldn't expand their ranks and get to work on fixing what ails this state.

"The opportunity was there for the Legislature to moderate," lobbyist Kevin DeMenna told me. "More so the House than the Senate, and the (Arizona) Free Enterprise Club is largely responsible for stopping that at the legislative level. The dark side just overwhelmed the mods."

The Arizona Free Enterprise Club, which spent big to boost 19 statewide and legislative candidates to victory, was successful in attacking a number of moderate challengers – often by photo shopping them beside a picture of Barack Obama.

But then, the Arizona Business Coalition and other outside groups campaigned on the moderates' behalf – often outspending the groups working for tea party victories.

The difference, of course, is that AzFEC may have campaigned illegally. The Secretary of State's Office has found "reasonable cause" to believe the group violated election laws in its $1.7 million campaign to influence your vote. The Attorney General's Office is investigating.

Regardless of what happens, we will have to live with the result. But that's not altogether a bad thing.

"The ideological complexion of the 2015 Legislature is not going to change," Republican analyst Chris Herstam said. "But there will still be a sizable segment of pragmatic Republicans who will be waiting to get to work on public policy issues that benefit the state of Arizona. And if that involves working with the other party, I think they're up to it."

They should be up to it. Legislators shouldn't have to sacrifice their political careers in order to do what's right for the state.